One-piece plastic desk or table top vertical files have achieved a significant amount of commercial success in the last several years because of their relatively low cost, space saving advantages and ease of use. One such product takes the form of a phone book stand that has top, bottom, rear and side walls. The side walls along with several partition walls are vertically arranged and scalloped to expose identification material on the phone books. Another similar product takes the form of a magazine file that is similar to the phone book stand except that it does not include the partition walls. This file holds a plurality of magazines in vertical orientation and still permits viewing a part of the magazine covers without removing them completely from the file. Still another one of these vertical files takes the form of a "handy file" that is essentially a cubicle container without a top wall that receives standard vertical dividers to define a paperwork type file.
All of these prior files are one-piece plastic moldings frequently as large as 12".times.12".times.12". These files or stands are injection moldings and because of their size require a very large mold and an injection molding machine large enough to inject the full volume of resin to complete the entire product. Such tooling is extremely costly because of its size and many small to medium size injection molding machines cannot be used to manufacture this product.
While these one-piece prior plastic files are relatively inexpensive, their product shipping containers are very large and therefore the shipping cost per part is inordinately high for a product in this low price category. A still further problem is that, as in all plastic parts, there are molding defects that result from shrinkage, inadequate injection pressure and other causes that produce part rejects, and since these products are made in one piece, a defect in part of the product requires that the entire product be rejected, further increasing product cost.
All of these characteristics of prior desk top plastic vertical files or stands contribute to the cost of the product and it is a primary objective of the present invention to ameliorate these cost-producing features without sacrificing any product utility.